Meport of Meetings for 1879, by James Hardy. 17 



with nearly white flowers. There was a blush of pink on some 

 of these when they decayed ; and hence I infer that they are a 

 sport from the red sort, which is occasionally obtained in that 

 locality. To resume, beds of the wood anemone of a variety of 

 hues from white to light purple grew on the drier soil. The 

 parasitic fungus on the leaves of this plant was common. Pyrola 

 minor was not un frequent ; and there was a profusion of the 

 Betonica officinalis, Ajuga reptans, Sanicula Europma, Hypericum 

 pulchrum, Melampyrum pratense, Adoxa moschatellina, Lathyrus 

 macrorhi%us, Geranium sylvaticum, Alchemilla vulgaris, Lysimachia 

 nemorum, Oxalis acetosella, and Viola syhatica. There were many 

 grey willow trees in blossom. These have this season been 

 attended by extraordinary quantities of queen humble bees, 

 which, perhaps owing to the cold having killed the field mice 

 that would have fed on them, escaped the winter uninjured. 

 This did not apply to the wasps, which have been extremely 

 scarce. This wood was intersected by several deep but short 

 ravines, with petty streams at the bottom, which present a suc- 

 cession of noisy waterfalls during spates, but ;,;e almost dried 

 up for the rest of the year. 



The Eev. Adam Spence pointed out the site of an old British 

 camp, half-way up the ascending ground, above old Houndwood 

 Inn, on the march between Houndwood and Renton estates. 

 Some other memorials of the old inhabitants in this immediate 

 district, may not inappropriately be here adverted to, inasmuch 

 as they have hitherto been unrecorded. On the moor behind 

 Greenwood farm lies Grreenwood moss. In this, a long time 

 since, as I was told by the late Mr Hope, the peat-diggers on 

 one occasion dug out an old bronze caldron, which was composed 

 of thin plates of metal riveted together. Another of the same 

 kind was come upon in 1857, under the following circumstances. 

 A drainer called James Hewitt was running a drain in Fawcet 

 field, on Brockholes farm, which bounds the Eenton estate on 

 the opposite side of the Eye, in a wet marshy place, on which 

 nothing ever grew, evidently an old well-head, when he came 

 upon a bronze caldron, with the mouth upwards. It had no 

 apparatus for handles, but was described as for size and appear- 

 ance to be like one of the largest furnace pots, and was composed 

 of separate pieces, ''clinked together with copper nails." The 

 bronze plates were thinner than even tinned iron. They were 



C 



